Agriculture and Farming

News about Agriculture and Farming, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times.

Chronology of Coverage

Mar. 2, 2015

Chinese technology firms are addressing food safety issues in country's vast food supply chain, seeking to upgrade old systems with data collection, smartphone apps and online markets; they are attempting to earn trust of customers by helping them avoid tainted food, but food safety scandals still occur often. MORE

Feb. 18, 2015

Growing movement of cooks, farmers and activists is working to bring agriculture back to Puerto Rico, which has for decades been reliant on imported processed foods; several restaurants and markets at forefront of island's local food scene have introduced locals to previously unknown diversity of produce. MORE

Feb. 11, 2015

Mark Bittman Op-Ed column warns that business, not government, has inordinate influence on setting goals for society, which makes addressing concerns with nation's food and agriculture systems difficult; calls on progressives and their allies to take more prominent role in determining societal priorities in order to push government to work for people instead of businesses. MORE

Feb. 11, 2015

Agriculture Department releases report estimating that net income for United States farmers will be $73.6 billion in 2015, down nearly 32 percent from $108 billion in 2014; would mark second consecutive year of declining income. MORE

Feb. 1, 2015

Farmers on Long Island's East End are once again harvesting and milling wheat, and selling it to the local community (Metropolitan/Long Island). MORE

Jan. 23, 2015

Many Nebraskan farmers are engaged in a deeply personal battle against Keystone XL Pipeline, fighting to protect heritage and land that has been passed down through several generations; vast majority of landowners along planned route have accepted terms with developer TransCanada, but roughly 12 percent that remain are planning to push back against eminent domain claims. MORE

Jan. 13, 2015

Farmers harvested record 14.2 billion bushels of corn in 2014, 3 percent more than 2013 crop; harvested record 3.97 billion bushels of soybeans, up 18 percent from 2013. MORE

Jan. 4, 2015

Poppy cultivation and opium it produces have flourished in Myanmar over past decade as many farmers turn to profitable crop; growing opium poppies is illegal in Myanmar, once the world’s largest supplier of heroin, but poor farmers say they have no other option; China is main market for superior quality of opium grown in 'Golden Triangle,' area that cuts across Myanmar, Thailand and Laos. MORE

Jan. 2, 2015

Scotts Miracle-Gro Company and several other firms are developing genetically modified crops with methods that are beyond scope of Agriculture Department or use unforeseen new techniques like 'genome editing'; critics fear unintended consequences of new plants created by bioengineering. MORE

Jan. 2, 2015

Egg prices will rise in 2015 as California begins requiring farmers to put fewer hens into cages or invest in expanded henhouses; costs will be passed on to consumers; new rule, supported by animal rights activists, is criticized by chicken farmers in states who sell eggs in California. MORE

Dec. 31, 2014

Many small businesses, like trucking firm Fresh Connection, are coming to forefront to supply local farmers and their customers with marketing, transportation, logistics and other services; services are meeting growing demand for meat and produce farmed locally; Fresh Connection provides delivery services to farms around New York City. MORE

Dec. 28, 2014

Almond farmers in California relying on water from federally controlled project to grow their crops are being threatened as state implements new controls on groundwater in effort to help salmon species survive during current drought. MORE

Dec. 14, 2014

Bananas are making a comeback in Somalia, rebounding from years of warfare in 1990s that decimated industry that was once the largest in Africa. MORE

Dec. 8, 2014

Conservation groups announce plans at conference on climate change in Peru to restore degraded land across Latin America with financing from private investments; project is effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions by improving productivity of current farmland. MORE

Dec. 7, 2014

Maca, vegetable heralded as cancer-fighting superfood and aphrodisiac, continues to boom in Peru, leaving some Peruvians fearful that they are losing control of valuable crop; buyers in United States, Europe and Japan says prices of processed maca has shot up, with some suppliers asking more than $20 a pound. MORE

Dec. 4, 2014

T M Luhrmann Op-Ed article examines research showing differences between Western cultures, which tend to be individualistic, and Asian cultures, which tend toward interdependency; points out study by journal Science showing rice farming in Asia and wheat farming in West created different orientations to their societies. MORE

Dec. 1, 2014

Technology has become a lifeline for many American farmers like Kip Tom, seventh-generation family farmer in Leesburg, Ind; Tom's Farms has expanded to 20,000 acres, from 700 in the 1970s, in part because of his adoption of technology like sensors on combines and iPhone apps for irrigation; those farmers who can afford the costly tools say they are helping them grow to compete with corporate agribusinesses. MORE

Nov. 28, 2014

Crop swaps around the country are like farmers markets that operate on barter system; neighborly exchanges of goods reflect food trends, with San Francisco Bay Area arguably center of crop-swap culture. MORE

Nov. 27, 2014

Two years of record cranberry harvests in Wisconsin, which has nation's highest production of the fruit, have sent prices plummeting, and millions of pounds more than usual are in storage; with only a fifth of country's supply used between fall and winter, cranberry industry is trying to expand market beyond America's holiday season, and even beyond America itself. MORE

Nov. 27, 2014

Op-Ed article by author Liz Carlisle suggests fair-trade paradigm created for tropical commodities like coffee must be applied to crops grown in rural America if sustainable food movement is to have serious impact on issues like climate change and the American diet; argues that local food movement is misguided and that smartest national strategy is to support food grown responsibly, no matter where it is produced. MORE

Nov. 25, 2014

Nov. 19, 2014

Boris Akimov, Russian founder of organic farm cooperative LavkaLavka, hopes ban on food imports from the West will boost Russia's fledgling farm-to-table movement; Akimov found himself flooded with requests from grocery chains after Pres Vladimir Putin imposed ban in retaliation for Western sanctions. MORE

Nov. 13, 2014

Op-Ed article by Professors Jacob E Gersen and Benjamin I Sachs holds country needs new labor laws for restaurant, farm and slaughterhouse workers, who play a critical role in nation's economic and public health systems; warns without such laws, country runs risk that workers, charged with producing our food, will be unable to protect public safety. MORE

Nov. 8, 2014

Department of Agriculture announces that potato genetically engineered to reduce amounts of potentially harmful chemical called acrylamide has been approved for commercial planting; new potato also resists bruising. MORE

Oct. 27, 2014

Op-Ed article by former North Carolina Rep Eva M Clayton calls on Congress and the Defense Dept to mandate that a percentage of military food come from small- and mid-scale farmers; holds initiative will allow millions of soldiers to share in the wide range of nutritional, environmental and economic benefits that many Americans have come to enjoy from local foods. MORE

Oct. 21, 2014

Iowa is undergoing economic transformation that is challenging its rural character and its political order; scale at which people and power have shifted from its rural towns to its urban areas is emerging as potent undercurrent in very close race between Joni Ernst and Bruce Braley as Iowans prepare to elect new United States senator (Series: States in Play). MORE

Oct. 15, 2014

Eduardo Porter Economic Scene column contends that price consumers pay for water rarely reflects true costs or scarcity; points out that farmers consume 80 percent of nation's water for virtually free; says higher prices are essential to induce conservation and investment in water-saving technology and to steer water to where it is valued most. MORE

Oct. 13, 2014

Fillmore, Calif, farmer Tony Dighera has created 'pumpkinstein,' pumpkin grown in shape of Frankenstein monster's head with use of plastic mold; Dighera, who has sold his entire crop of over 5,000 of pumpkins, is capitalizing on $7 billion Halloween business. MORE

Oct. 13, 2014

China's most able farmers, frustrated by how little they earn, have migrated to cities, hollowing out rural districts in Chinese heartland; farm output remains high, but rural living standards have stagnated compared with cities, and few in the countryside see their future there; agriculture has become burden for country; government reform gives farmers rights, but not ownership. MORE

Oct. 13, 2014

Competition from synthetic fibers has damaged earnings for New Zealand's wool exporters, and sheep farmers are retooling their operations in response; on many of country's 17,000 sheep farms, meat has replaced wool as primary profit maker. MORE

Oct. 6, 2014

Record household debt and signs of drought are squeezing Thailand's economy; country's farmers are expected to bear the brunt as central bank predicts economic growth of 1.5 percent for 2014. MORE

Oct. 3, 2014

Proliferation of unmarked towers used by wind energy companies poses threat to pilots crop-dusting fields and has led to calls for more regulation; at least five people, including three crop-duster pilots, have died after hitting the towers since 2003. MORE

Sep. 28, 2014

Adirondack Grazers Cooperative, type of co-op for grass-fed cows, helps members with farms from the Adirondacks to the Pennsylvania border market and sell their beef; organization goes beyond logistical support, providing sense of hope and community for small farmers in state where family farms are rapidly vanishing. MORE

Sep. 25, 2014

Israel is experimenting with alternative observances of shmita, traditional rest period for farmers that comes every seventh year. MORE

Sep. 23, 2014

Scientists are growing crops under conditions designed to mimic future climate change in effort to study effects of global warming on food production. MORE

Sep. 18, 2014

Agriculture Dept has approved commercial planting of corn and soybeans genetically engineered to survive being sprayed by herbicide 2,4-D; critics say cultivation of the crops, developed by Dow AgroSciences, will mean a sharp increase in the spraying of 2,4-D, chemical they say is more damaging to the environment, nearby non-engineered crops and possibly human health. MORE

Sep. 7, 2014

Public health experts say hundreds of children continue to work in America's tobacco fields, where they are exposed to hazardous conditions due to exposure to nicotine and other chemicals; opponents of child labor are hoping to revive proposal quashed by Obama administration in 2012, which sought to make this work illegal for children under 16, after midterm elections are over. MORE

Sep. 4, 2014

Dacian Ciolos, European Union’s agriculture commissioner, says he will double funds available for promoting the sale of farm goods; move is effort to counteract the effects of boycott by Russia, important export market for European producers. MORE

Sep. 1, 2014

Agiripalli Journal; farmers in belt of villages near Krishna River delta in Agiripalli, India, are trying to fend off rush of land buyers who seem to have appeared overnight; farmland along corridor of recently divided state of Andhra Pradesh has been bought up by real estate speculators hoping to profit from creation of new capital in delta. MORE

Sep. 1, 2014

Alaskan advocates for local food, boosted by state programs and incentives, are pushing back against commonly held notion that eating food grown or raised in Alaska is impossible or too expensive; Alaska now has its first food co-op, offering 50 percent locally grown produce in the summer to its thousands of owner-members, and is ranked 16th in national 'Locavore Index' created by a Vermont-based advocacy group. MORE

Aug. 30, 2014

United Nations World Food Program says as many as 2.8 million people are struggling to feed themselves in Central American because of severe drought; Guatemala declared state of emergency after 256,000 families lost their crops. MORE

Aug. 30, 2014

Behold! New Lebanon festival in Columbia County, NY, reimagines struggling Hudson Valley town as living museum of contemporary rural American life; festival is being packaged as deliberate contrast to nostalgia-fueled reenactments elsewhere; if effort succeeds, New Lebanon will join an emerging rural renaissance in which small towns are reinventing themselves by embracing local skills and artisanship. MORE

Aug. 28, 2014

Thieves have struck two farms in Bristol and Wethersfield, CT, taking more than $1,200 worth of corn and leaving farmers to debate ways to better safeguard their crops; two suspects have been charged for stealing corn from Anderson Farms in Wethersfield. MORE

Aug. 28, 2014

Work on New York's nearly 900 food gardens and urban farms is primarily done by women, raising questions of whether it is stereotypes or willingness to nurture communities that are reason for such uneven staffing; advocates of urban farming wonder how gender disparity will affect movement's farming model, mission and pay structures. MORE

Aug. 26, 2014

Energy exploration in North Dakota is creating a crisis for farmers whose grain shipments have been held up by vast new movement of oil by rail; Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, North Dakota's largest railroad, reportedly has a backlog of 1,336 rail cars waiting to ship grain and other products; farmers say backlog is only going to get worse, leading to million of dollars in losses from agricultural waste. MORE

Aug. 26, 2014

Partnership between nonprofit Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture and Rockefeller State Park Preserve uses privately owned ewes to mow and maintain publicly managed land in New York's Westchester County; partners view arrangement as model for use of public lands by young farmers stymied by limited accessibility and high real estate prices. MORE

Aug. 18, 2014

Noteworthy names such as Zakary Pelaccio, April Bloomfield and Sean Brock got together for a culinary hoedown in the Hudson Valley that was all about turning up the heat. MORE

Aug. 17, 2014

Number of Latinos who own or operate a farm has grown dramatically, as many go from working in the fields to sitting in head offices; number of farms run by Latinos has grown by 21 percent from 2007 to 2012, to a total of 67,000; shift turns on classic American bootstrap stories of grit, determination and luck. MORE

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